Looks like I have to rethink my calling.

Blow Away the Opposition in Starfleet Commander

In Starfleet Commander, you enter the universe on a small outpost in a large galaxy.  You have a small amount of Ore, Crystal and Hydrogen to build up a massive space empire and armada.  Unlike games like Mafia Wars or Castle Age, everything in Starfleet Commander happens in real-time.  Building your first levels of Ore Mines and Power Stations takes only minutes.  In later levels, it takes hours, and sometimes days to build things.  So for a lot of the time, you will be seeing a bunch of progress bars across your screen.

Is it done yet?

Yet, this is what makes the game incredibly compelling.  After a few levels of being immune in “newbie” status, you are thrown into a pretty cutthroat world.  Once you are out of newbie status, anyone can attack you and steal your resources, and harvest the remains of your fleet from orbit.

I started the game with a friend of mine who was unlucky enough to live close to an incredibly aggressive player named “Caesar.”  That player plundered most of his resources from neighbors who happened to be weaker than him.  This sparked a massive arms race which also led to an alliance formed by many players disgruntled with becoming a feeding ground.

So, these progress bars become everything – how fast your fleets can move, do raids against other players, or how fast it takes to research technologies or construct buildings that are necessary for you to climb the tech tree.  And for some strange reason, organizing fleets, transporting goods among colonies, and arranging the flow of traffic becomes incredibly compelling.

Maybe I should work for Air Traffic Control

Now, the monetization of this game is fairly light compared to the Zynga games of Mafia Wars and Farmville because you can really only buy technologies or buildings with in-game credits. So there is a limited number of places a person could “buy” their way to the top. And I have to admit, I have been tempted more than once to swipe my credit card or to take these surveys or offer deals on in their store to get ahead in the game.

However, recent news has been showing that these games are full of scam-ridden surveys and offers.

To be fair to Blue Frog Gaming who created Starfleet Commander, they aren’t part of this massive class action lawsuit against Zynga. But if anyone is considering putting money into these games, be really careful. I personally would give money directly to the companies for credits because their games are just that much fun.

And to be honest, Starfleet Commander did contribute to my insomnia.

If anyone tries Starfleet Commander out and wants an alliance to join, look up my alliance – “Fading Suns“.

Could it be that no one knew what boredom was until the modern age?

Work it!

One of the major changes happening in the middle of the 19th century was the second wave of the Industrial Revolution.  The world was seeing massive advances in technology resulting in faster means of production, communication, travel and convenience.  This freed up many middle class people and introduced to them a novelty only the rich and powerful had – leisure time.  For the first time for many people in the new age of  Industrialism, there was a time in the day that was not dedicated to work or to prayer – but a time solely dedicated to personal enjoyment.  And yet, this is the same era that words like the French “ennui” and the English “boredom” are introduced into the common language.

It would seem like innovations such as the telephone, television, and personal computing would relieve this existential anxiety, but in many ways, it has made it worse.  And even the creation of cellular technology and the wireless Internet where absolutely anything and anyone can be reached with a touch of a button, has not made anyone more at ease.  In fact, you could argue that people are a lot worse and don’t even stop to wonder why.

Part of the problem lies in the difference between a consumer and a creator.

When I was a young boy, I repeated a line I heard on a TV show to my mother. “I’m bored,” I said. My mother took a moment, looked at me and replied with much love, “The only people who get bored are boring people.” I didn’t quite understand what she was trying to tell me, so she underscored the point, “A person only becomes bored because they aren’t creative. Do you want to be a boring person?” I quickly said, “No!” “So, find something to do.” And that was the last day I was ever bored.

People today are trained to be consumers. People consume music, television shows and games at a voracious pace. And when music starts to sound repetitive, television starts rehashing old plot line, or games start to lose their novelty, people sometimes get anxious and even angry that they aren’t entertained – as if it was someone else’s fault that they cannot stave off the boredom. And as much as reading is better than television, even books are a consumer medium as well.

You know you want to buy some hot Vampire Love!

Perhaps now that everyone has a lot less money to throw around, it may be a good time to look at your hobbies and ask yourself, “Do I have a hobby that actually creates something – rather than consumes something that someone else makes?”

Speaking of creative hobbies…

I have completed all my freelancing work and probably won’t have anything lined up for the rest of the fall into next year.  My wife’s business is off and running, but we are holding off on an actual web page until a later date.  Her current focus is creating some dresses and modeling at a Steampunk/Victorian fashion show in November.  She is busy completing her pieces.  After that, she will start focusing more on the web page and I am more than happy to start getting her business off the ground.

So in the meantime… I can get a Flash Game done between now and Thanksgiving.  Hoo-rah!

I recently picked up “Wii Sports Resort” for my family.  I cannot under emphasize how much I love many of the Wii games that cater towards party and family play.  The Wii alone has made my wife a big time gamer, and Wii Sports is a welcome addition to our family gaming library.

My eldest son, who is about 4 1/2 years, really picked up on Basketball.  He still has trouble with shooting, but is a real monster when it comes to slam dunks.  After playing a few games with him to learn the ropes, I quickly stopped giving him a handicap and found that I had to play at my best to win.

My eldest son is highly competitive and doesn’t like to lose.  After a grueling round of playing, I was barely in the lead and half a second before I could claim victory, my son pauses the game and hits “restart.”  He “rage quit.”  I couldn’t believe it.  I told him that I would not play with him if he did that again because it was rude and unfair.  So, after some tears and some encouraging words from my wonderful wife, my son came back said he was sorry and said that he will just try harder next time.  A gaming experience became a wonderful life lesson.

Monster Slam!

But what surprised me even more was that the following day, my son asked me if we could play real basketball.  I’m happy that he loved playing laundry-basket ball more than the Wii.  But he would never have discovered it, had it not been for the game.

This phenomenon is more common than one would think.  Apparently, there has been a notable increase in musical instrument sales – especially rock band instruments – since the debut of games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

You're going to be seeing more dudes like this.

Now, there are certainly games that take people away to mythical fantasy worlds to explore places they have never seen before.  And there is certainly temptation to go off into these worlds and never come back.  But this phenomenon is not peculiar to games as many a bookworm would tell you.

Not all games take people away from the world.  Sometimes it is games that make more people interested in the world around them.

So after this teeth-grinding and harrowing month I had at work, I am taking a long stay-cation and treating my wife and family.  Don’t worry, I plan to do some major blogging again.  It’s just that my eldest son has been playing this particular game and has been begging me to show him what it is like for real.  I’m more than happy to oblige.

Gone Fishing

It’s times like this that you really evaluate what truly matters in your life and how small are the things we hold dear to ourselves.  All the things we waste time upon instead of truly treasuring the people who make life worth living.  And one of the serious offenders for taking time away from loved ones is games.

The key to games is understanding that games can be powerful servants but awful masters.  Few people realize that games are more than just a past-time – gaming is one of the most powerful tools for accessing and repairing damaged parts of the brain and can be a great boon for humanity rather than a massive time waster that widows wives and orphans children.

Games can repair the brain

Games are a powerful tool not just for education, but for real neurological benefit.  My initial foray into gaming was making games whose task is to stimulate neurological functioning.  Many of these games would seem very inane and resemble variations of the game “Memory”, but given enough time and practice these games can actually improve brain function, delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, and rehabilitate stroke symptoms.

What got me thinking was that my mother will need these kinds of games for her rehabilitation as well as entertainment to enjoy.  But a great number of games that she loves and enjoys are simply not accessible for persons without fine motor skills.  One may not think that using a mouse is a “fine motor skill” but for persons with severe neurological damage, a mouse is so much harder to use than a keyboard.  How many games out there do you know are designed for use with a single hand that is not a mouse?

Not meant for accessibility

I’ve taken a lot of thought and decided that after I release my fall game that I will dedicate myself to making not only games that my wife and kids will enjoy, but that my mother can access and use with limited motor function.  I used to be one of the first web technology experts at Booz | Allen | Hamilton for the U.S. Government standards for accessibility (Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act), and so I am familiar on how all technologies can be utilized to overcome all sorts of neurological and physiological disabilities.

Games don’t have to be just mere entertainment and escape.  Games can be an instrument of true freedom and a great boon to humanity and the human drama.